


we'll grow toward the sun, though sometimes it'll be hard

by jublis



Series: heirloom [10]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, F/F, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Healing, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, Lesbian Azula (Avatar), Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, azula keeps meeting girls who are extremely pretty and pretentious, azula's super fun solo life changing field trip through the earth kingdom, but she mentions both katara and suki because feminism, i read the comics specifically so i could ignore them, right out the bat, screaming at ur uncle for catharsis, they did my girl so dirty, what is it with fire nation royalty and doing That, wrote everything and then realized she doesn't mention aang or sokkas name once, zuko is azula's conscience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:26:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25410844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jublis/pseuds/jublis
Summary: There isn’t any shame in relying in others,Zuko had told her, once. Face soft with sleep, curled up on her bedside in the facility, as she painted her nails in an attempt to stop chewing them.I learned it the hard way. Sometimes you need to hit rock bottom to climb your way back up.And sometimes when you hit rock bottom you break your neck,she’d answered.Why let yourself get that low?It’s difficult to know which way is up and which way is down sometimes,he’d said. Finger tapping his scar.It isn’t the hitting the ground that gets you. Sometimes it’s the fall.Or, Azula takes the long way home. Featuring the passage of time, the life-changing aspects of a field trip across the Earth Kingdom, and making a place for yourself.
Relationships: Azula & Iroh (Avatar), Azula & Mai & Ty Lee, Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Azula (Avatar) & Original Character(s), Azula (Avatar)/Original Female Character(s), Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar), Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: heirloom [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1808977
Comments: 116
Kudos: 610





	we'll grow toward the sun, though sometimes it'll be hard

**Author's Note:**

> SO QUICK NOTE BEFORE WE START i strongly recommend that you read the work before this one to understand it better!!! this focuses on azula's travels, while the previous one talks about her relationship w/ zuko before she leaves the fire nation. also, you might recognize one of the ocs in here from suki's character study! so maybe check that out too :P
> 
> i really hope u guys like this. also @ ao3 user perpetually_tired i took one for the team!!!
> 
> title is from "broken cityscapes", by nana grizol.

**i.**

Azula travels alone. 

She doesn’t have much on her. A change of clothes, a bottle of lipstick, a few silver pieces, a shard of glass. There’s one more shirt wrapped around all that, but Azula already knows she’s not going to wear that again; the cloth is already as sweaty and stained up by the road as it gets. She keeps walking.

Another thing she doesn’t have: a plan. There’s a sort of hollowness in the notion. For the past four years, she hasn’t needed a plan, nothing more than getting through the day without burning something down, and then getting through the night well enough to wake up in the morning. If she stopped for a moment, it was unbearable. If she stopped and thought, for a moment— _maybe there’s no point to this, maybe there’s no point to any of this_ —the pain became unbearable. 

Day after day. Breath after breath. This is the only way she could learn how to live. And how very odd was it, in the end, to realize; she’d always expected to come out of this war victorious. She’d always expected to lead her people to greatness. But she never, ever, imagined herself looking back on it. In her mind’s eye, there was no after the war, just like there was no before. 

Azula looks down at her own hands, slender fingers curling into her palm. Nothing left to hold onto. 

Even under the soles of her boots, the ground is scorching, the pebbles crunching beneath her feet like the cracking of bones. The air is so dry it almost stings her face, the sun forever shining in the sky. Around her, nothing but dry grass and open road, the only way to go forward or back. 

Dimly, she thinks of her uncle. He’d have something to say about that, she’s sure. 

She keeps walking.

(She wishes she’d said goodbye to Zuko. 

There’s a dagger strapped to her thigh. A gift. _Never give up without a fight,_ it says, on one side. Zuko had closed her fingers over the hilt, keeping his own hand over hers for just one moment more than needed, that anxious expression on his face like he expected her to bite his face off. Then he’d bowed and grinned at her, saying, _I hope this will lead you somewhere._

That was a week before she was discharged from the facility.

She’d turned the dagger over, looking at the inscription on the other side. _Made in the Earth Kingdom._

There’s a joke to be made there. There are a million things to be said. There’s a sister watching her brother close the door behind him, knowing she’s never known how to say goodbye, knowing he doesn’t, either. There’s a brother hesitating for one moment too long, then two, before another boy calls for him. There’s the way he looked back over his shoulder, frowning, before going.

Azula is her uncle’s niece. She twirled the dagger between her fingers, tracing the metal with her nails, chewed to the quick. It’ll lead her somewhere.)

The trees get denser somewhere north of the trail she’s following, and she makes her way toward it, trying to tell herself she isn’t stumbling, she just needs to sit down for a few minutes, to catch her breath. The plants grow taller than she’s ever seen them, so green it hurts the eye, after miles and miles of dirt and sky. Azula looks at the sun streaming in through the leaves, the light falling in broken pieces to the ground, like shards of glass. Her face is burning under the coolness of her hands as she presses her palms to it, rubbing her forehead. She’s been walking since dawn, snacking on wild berries she’d collected the night before, letting her chi guide her East, towards the bay. 

(If she stops—)

She forgets the Fire Nation is an island, sometimes. She’s travelled so much, seen so many parts of the world, but she’s never thought much about the getting there. A path was always guaranteed for her. Now, she needs a way to cross the ocean. She needs money for a ticket, food and water to keep her going, and when she makes it to the shoreline, she needs to find something else. 

If Azula had asked, Zuko would have provided her with a fleet. If she’d asked properly, he would have given her just enough to get her to the port comfortably, to afford a reliable passage. He wouldn’t have asked her why. 

Which is exactly why she didn’t. 

_There isn’t any shame in relying in others_ , Zuko had told her, once. Face soft with sleep, curled up on her bedside in the facility, as she painted her nails in an attempt to stop chewing them. _I learned it the hard way. Sometimes you need to hit rock bottom to climb your way back up._

_And sometimes when you hit rock bottom you break your neck,_ she’d answered. _Why let yourself get that low?_

_It’s difficult to know which way is up and which way is down sometimes,_ he’d said. Finger tapping his scar. _It isn’t the hitting the ground that gets you. Sometimes it’s the fall._

That was a year ago. Azula had told him to leave, then, but she thinks about what she would have done if she hadn’t shut the conversation down. Her tutors always praised her for her eidetic memory, how she couldn’t forget a thing even if she wanted to. In her father’s eye, that made her even more valuable. _A leader who doesn’t forget cannot be fooled. Memory is such an invaluable tool, is it not? We rely on it so much, and yet…_

And yet. Azula is not a leader. She was sharpened into a weapon, but a weapon can only draw blood. It doesn’t see a future beyond pain.

(A girl in the facility, her skin warm as she squeezed Azula’s hand. _You touch me like I’m not sharp,_ Azula said, just because. 

The girl, looking at her. _Your eyes are like the sun_ , she said. _Like a sunrise, instead of a sunset. It’s beautiful._

True beauty exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. Azula didn’t answer her.)

She follows the sound of water, the gentle pitter-patter of droplets upon rocks. It’s a gentle stream, clear, and Azula bites her tongue so she doesn’t let out any sounds of relief as she dips her hands inside it. She washes her face, neck, takes off her shirt to wash the rest of her body, and she does not look at her own reflection. She drinks as much water as she can before getting up and strapping the her makeshift bag around her back again.

She keeps walking.

**ii.**

Azula has never seen the bay from this angle. She’s been carried through crowds, led through passageways with dry floors and scented air until she got into the boat reserved for her, steered people away from her with a mere glare and a flicker of their eyes towards her crown. 

How much weight a crown holds. Azula is seventeen and her hair is shaved down to her scalp and her face is streaked with dirt, hands blistering and clothes stained. She has nothing. She is nothing. Her passport is worthless, because she never needed it before; she has no name to answer to, nowhere to go, no one to lead her.

Her shoulders have never felt lighter.

She pushes her way through the crowd, not afraid to use her sharp elbows and knees when the men get too rough, to snarl at the women who mistake her haste for advances. There are many faces like hers, here, between the concrete ground and the wooden piers. If you have nowhere to go, this is a beggar’s spot. A boy sitting on top of a threadbare sheet next to one of the small restaurants waves at Azula, as if inviting her. He has a burn mark covering his entire neck, bony hands cradling a teacup, and Azula’s heart stutters in her chest until he’s out of sight.

It’s near dusk and the sky is tinted gray and purple, the salt in the air filling up her mouth, making her eyes sting. This is the part where she uses the single silver piece she has left to buy herself a one way ticket to the Earth Kingdom; this is the part where she runs.

Azula gets to the docks, and she can’t move. 

The ocean opens into infinity beyond her, a dark mass of water lapping at the rocky shore, the small patch of sand barely discernible from where she stands. It smells of salt and sweat and fish, of human heat. There are people down there, she notices. Tiny flickers of flame that they use to light their paths, rolling around barrels and shouting as each other as they make their way towards a small vessel, which seems barely able to contain all of them. Azula counts four, as far as she can see, but nothing beyond that. 

Oh, how it feels like she’s standing at the edge of the world. Like if she just took one step—just one more step—she’d fall.

(Sometimes, it’s the fall that gets you.)

One of the people in the docks looks up suddenly, raising the fire in their hands next to their face. It’s a small, dirty thing, sallow cheekbones and ratty brown hair cut short. Their entire frame is wiry and lean, as if born to run fast. They look at Azula straight in the eye.

She doesn’t know what they see. But whatever they were looking for, they seem to find it in her.

“Hey, sweetcheeks!” The person yells, motioning with their free hands. “These barrels ain’t gonna roll themselves. Come on, chop chop!”

Azula is so startled by being addressed like this that she doesn’t even realize what she’s doing until her boots are covered with mud from sliding down to the shore, the darkness swallowing them all. And she should be scared. She should be disgusted. But she looks at the person in front of her and raises her chin. 

“Where’s the vessel going?”, she asks, voice hoarse. She can’t remember the last time she spoke.

The person with the ratty hair shrugs, and another head pops up behind their shoulder, a grin so wide it makes their entire face crinkle. “Oh, you know,” says the newcomer, airily. The girl looks to be around Azula’s age, dark skin and hair in long braids falling around her shoulders. “Here and there. Been _around_ , girl, but this time we’re making it to the northeast shore of the Earth Kingdom.” She stares Azula up and down, crossing her arms. “That what you looking for?”

Azula nods, tightly. The girl’s smile widens, and she has to look away. The person holding the fire sighs, and it sighs with her. “Honestly, Aiya,” they say. “You’re going to get us all killed by picking up strays.”

“Come _on_ , Hai,” Aiya says. “The girl is skin and bones. And we _do_ have one free lodging space since Jin quit us. We need all the hands we can get.” 

Hai sighs again, but Azula can already see them relenting. “Anythin’ happens, it’s on you.” They turn to Azula, gesturing with their free hand for her to come closer. Azula keeps her steps light, ready to pounce or run at a moment’s notice—she hasn’t trained since before the war, but old habits die hard. She’s pretty sure she can take all of them without breaking a sweat. But Hai only raises their flame, squinting their eyes to see Azula better.

She looks around. Aiya is watching Hai watching her, and behind them all, two boys are trying to pretend that they're still working and not paying attention to what’s happening. In the gloom, she can’t see much beyond their bare arms and dirty clothes, but there’s a strange feeling in her gut, telling her to stay. 

“As long as you have two functioning arms, I got nothin’ against you,” says Hai. “Just need a name and an age. Don’t try lying, too.”

Azula doesn’t have much use for spirits, but she takes this for what it is. She takes in Aiya’s impish smile, and the lines around Hai’s young eyes, and the boys rolling the last of the barrels to the vessel—twins, she notices. Brown skin, long hair, clothes that were once blue. 

Her father would hate this.

She doesn’t blink as she says, “Zula. Eighteen.”

A half-lie and a lie. Half a name of the sister she once was—Zuko’s young voice in her head, _Zula, Zula, come and see this!_ _—_ and an age still months away from her. But Azula was always a better liar than she was a person, and Hai only nods as they motion her forward, pointing towards the small wooden vessel. The two boys are already on deck, pulling up ropes and setting sail with practiced ease, like they were born to do this, and Azula tries not to cringe with the creaking of the floor underneath her feet as she walks. The smell of mottled wood fills her nostrils, but she keeps her face neutral.

It’s as small up close as it looked from afar. The mast in the center of the deck looks like it could make the whole thing topple over, and with the amount of barrels stored under it, Azula can’t imagine there’ll be much place for privacy. There are sleeping bags rolled up in the far corner of the ship, and a tiny cabinet with open windows houses a desk covered with inked pieces of paper, two threadbare cushions covering two respective chairs on either side of it. Hai leads Azula there and flops down on top of one, so Azula slowly sits down on the other. It creaks under her weight.

To be silent was to be safe. But now, to hold sound is also to hold the ability to exist.

Azula can live with that.

Hai shoots a small flame with their finger to light up a torch on the inner side of the cabinet, and then starts scribbling furiously on a spare sheet of paper. Azula can hear Aiya’s voice just outside, loud cackles echoing as she talks to the other crew members. 

“Zula,” Hai mutters as they write, never looking up at her. “Eighteen. Date of enlistment—third week of Autumn, isn’t it?”

Azula blinks. “You’re not even going to ask me where I’m from?” she asks. “You’re just going to— _hire_ me? Just like that?”

_No wonder the rest of the world crumbled like that during the war_ , she doesn’t say. _You trust too easily._

Hai raises an eyebrow at her. “I don’t have to ask where you’re from, sweetie. You’re Fire Nation, through and through.” They tap their temple. “It’s all in the eye. That spark. You a bender?”

Azula’s chi stutters at the question, coiling around her chest. Agni’s light inside her, the princess born when the sun was at its highest in the sky, flames between her hands before she was able to spell her own name. Fire spilling from her eyes like tears.

She hasn’t firebended since the Agni Kai. 

Sometimes, it feels like it would be as easy as breathing. Sometimes, it feels like she’d never stop burning if she tried, like the fire would consume everything around her, every last bit of dignity and humanity she’d managed to scrape together, all of this little life she’d accidentally created around herself. The one where there’s no looming shadow of a father gripping her shoulder until it bruises, the one where there isn’t people who cower and scream and bleed at her hand. The one where there’s a brother, a boy who held her close to his chest as she sobbed, who shaved her head and let her go where she needed, who looked at her like she was more than she ever thought there was. The one where there’s a brother out there who loves her. 

Azula wants to keep this life. She has no right to want anything, but she wants this. And this is the path she takes.

“Not anymore,” Azula says. 

Hai doesn’t seem surprised. They scribble something else down, and then slap their hands down on the table, pulling themselves up and extending a hand. “Welcome aboard, Zula,” they say. Their handshake is as firm as their stance, and dimly, Azula thinks that whoever this person is, they must have been a great fighter, once. “Don’t burn anything down, don’t break any bones but your own, and keep your secrets, as many as you have. Keep them all, as long as you can lie well and do your job.”

“Thank you,” Azula says, tasting the words. “That’s good to know. I won’t—I’ll do my best.”

Not the best. _Her_ best. 

How unforgivable.

(She stays with the crew for eight months.

The twins are named Kaz and Maiko, and their parents are dead. Father was a scout from the Southern Water Tribe, injured in battle and left to heal at a small Earth Kingdom village. They were born a year later, and by the time they reached fourteen, a plague had swept through their home twice, taking a parent with each. Azula exchanges maybe a handful of words with either of them for the entire time—they prefer to keep to themselves, talking quickly in the dialect of their town, their accents heavy and silences solemn. They remind her of the Water Tribe girl. Not because of the obvious reason, but because Azula hasn’t seen Katara since she defeated her, and these two boys look so, so young. 

  
  


Hai is a storyteller, and sort of a surrogate parent for all of them, regardless of how much Azula pushes back. At night, they sit all of the crew in a circle, a fire alight and cupped between their hands, and they talk. About vengeful spirits and stormy nights, about islands so small they crossed the bridge between their world and another one, of love stories so tragic something in Azula’s mouth tastes sour. Sometimes, Hai sings. There are no instruments in the vessel, but Aiya follows along with the melody, her voice low and clear as water. They sing, and Azula watches the sky pass them by. 

Azula works. She ties ropes and sets sail and rolls barrels up and down from the vessel, never asking what’s in them. She learns how to haggle just the right amount to always walk away victorious, keeping her voice loud and free as it never had been before, when her words were measured and practiced. Sometimes she remembers how Zuko spent three years of his banishment at sea, travelling the world with sailors. Sometimes she wonders what he’d think to see her here.

Aiya twirls pieces of dry earth between her hands, molding them into shapes as she does so. An earthbender, so far away from her element. So far away from home.

_Why would you choose to travel through sea?_ Azula asks.

_So I always know what I’m missing_ , Aiya says. _So stepping on land always feels like coming home._

Her movements are practiced, easy. Azula has seen her form before, a million years ago, with the cutting edge of metal fans drawing blood from her skin, the snarl on painted lips from a girl in a fight that was almost beautiful in its fairness. Equal against equal—but when it counts the most, that’s never enough.

_My brother knows someone from Kyoshi Island,_ Azula says. Offers. _A warrior._

Aiya’s eyes widen, green speckled with brown. _A warrior,_ she breathes. _What’s her name?_

Azula looks out into the night sea. _I never cared to ask,_ she says. _But maybe I should have._

She leaves three weeks later, the same way she came. In the falling dusk, with only the clothes on her back, a hungry stomach, and a dagger.)

**iii.**

Azula wouldn’t call it _love_. 

There’s something she and her brother have in common. How she looked at girls the way he should have, and so on. How her stomach fluttered whenever she used to make Ty Lee laugh. How her fingers never quite intertwined with Aiya’s. How she pulled away before they could. 

The village has four main buildings, all made of sturdy wood, narrow and slightly tilting to the left, making each edge of its borders. A hospital, a school, an inn, and a bar. No one looks twice as Azula walks in, the same way no one will look twice when she goes away. This is a place meant for leaving; everyone is either here or not here, gone before sunrise or back before sundown. Sometimes they come back, dirtstreaked, and settle for one more night. Sometimes they never do. 

The town is a few miles off shore, and Azula walks for hours before she catches sight of it. She was able to exchange her makeshift bag for an actual leather bag, and a small sack of silver pieces that she earned on the job clinks inside it as she makes her way to the inn, slamming down two coins for two nights and four meals. The innkeeper looks her up and down, weathered face settled into a frown. Azula’s aware of how she looks—her hair has been growing steadily back, now just below her earlobes, but enough for her to need and pull it away from her eyes. Her clothes are a mix of things she acquired during the past few months, Earth Kingdom browns and muddy greens, the heavy boots the only thing from home she refused to give up, besides the dagger.

She’s barely worth a second glance. A traveller, through and through, gold eyes or not.

“Where you going after this, kid?” The innkeeper asks as he takes Azula’s money, handing her a key in return. 

“I haven’t decided yet,” she answers, curtly. “Any ideas?”

The innkeeper shrugs. “Don’t know much about tourist spots in the homeland. Want to make something of yourself, go to Ba Sing Se. If travel is all you want, well,” he gestures widely. “The Earth Kingdom is no small place.” 

“Sure,” Azula says. “I’m staying here only to rest for a few nights. Then I’m gone.”

“Suit yourself,” he says. “Ain’t much to do or see around here, except for the bar. If you’re looking for a game or a brawl, that’s your safest bet.”

The bar is as wooden and narrow as every other building in the village, stood right on the center of town up to three floors. In the windowsill of the third floor, potted plants drink in the sun; the lower part is much less graceful, with a wide door that opens inwards, and the drunken shouts that escape from its walls ever so often. There’s no one guarding the door, checking for ages, so Azula walks in.

She sits by the bar, and tells the bartender to give her whatever she thinks best. The bartender smiles, brown skin soft looking and warm, and slides down the table a small glass of honey whiskey, full with ice. “On the house,” she says, when Azula goes to pay.

Azula comes back the next day. 

The bartender’s name is Aimah. Though she looks barely older than Azula herself, she commands the room with grace, passing out orders and shutting down advances from the customers, mixing drinks and separating fights with her broom, headscarf changing with the weather. Azula has been in the village for two days when their eyes finally meet. Aimah’s headscarf is bright red, as is her skin when Azula holds the stare for one moment too long, and then two.

Unfamiliar territory. Azula has been learning all about that.

( _You and the Water Tribe boy,_ she’d asked Zuko. _I’ve heard the rumors. Is it true?_

_Rumors?_ Zuko had echoed. _You mean there’s people who doubt it?_ A cheeky smile. But at Azula’s face, it softened, good eye crinkling with understanding. _Azula_ , he said. _Hey_.

_He took everything else_ , she’d said. _The joy and the anger and the hatred, and made it his. But he won’t take this._ )

Aimah has a dimple on her left cheek when she smiles. There are freckles dusting her nose, and she sews her own scarves, and this bar is a heirloom from her aunt, who passed away during the war. She gives Azula one free drink, and then one more, and as soon as the sun sets, she takes her hand and leads her upstairs. 

Azula won’t call it love. But they lay in bed together in threadbare sheets and mattress, legs intertwined, and Azula tells her, “I won’t sleep. I get nightmares.”

Aimah blinks up at her. “That’s a given,” she says, her vowels rounded with an accent Azula doesn’t recognize. “It’s written all over your face.”

“Well, if it’s that obvious,” Azula says, trying not to sound nervous. “Why did you bring me up here?”

“Rush along, love,” Aimah’s murmurs against her skin, already half asleep. “Take two lonely girls and put them together and see how long it lasts. Life’s too short to be asking why.”

Azula lets Aimah pull her down until her head is resting against the pillow, until Aimah is resting her face on Azula’s shoulder. “I have nothing,” she says. “I’d be a liability to you.”

“How cheeky,” Aimah says. “I didn’t ask you to stay. I know better. But if you do stay, for however short,” she adds, hand cupping Azula’s face. “Make it worthwhile. I won’t ask where it hurts. I won’t love the bruises out of you, but I’ll love them.”

“Who’s cheeky now?” Azula says, downplaying the way her heart is pounding in her chest, the way her blood is singing in her veins. “You barely know me, and you talk about _love_. I could have lied about everything I’ve told you so far.”

“The name you gave me is the name you gave me,” Aimah says, breath warm against Azula’s skin. “Girls like us don’t get forever. There’s no time for falling.”

“Rush along, love,” Azula echoes, the words sweet on her tongue. 

Aimah places her elbows on either side of Azula’s body and presses a kiss to the tip of her nose, eyes wide and shining even in the dark. “Tell me tomorrow if you’ll stay another day,” she says. “That’s all I ask.”

“Okay,” Azula whispers, long after Aimah has fallen asleep, long after the first rays of sunshine have started to fall in through the narrow window. “Okay.”

In the morning, she tells Aimah she’ll stay one more night. And in the day after that, she says the same. 

(Azula stays for a year.

At the end of the first three months, she looks herself in the mirror and vows she’ll leave as soon as her hair grows long enough to tie back. As soon as it can fit into a proper topknot, she’s making her way back to the Fire Nation. 

Two weeks later, she sees her mother’s face in the reflection. 

Azula screams, and breaks the mirror, and uses the shards to cut off all the hair that had grown, until her scalp is bare and bleeding from scratches, and Aimah finds her there, curled up on herself in the floor of the room they share, staring unblinking at the wall. When she tries to touch her, Azula screams again, and flame bursts from her lips like it was always just at the edge of her mouth, waiting to break free. She screams and thrashes and yells at Aimah to leave her, to get out of her sight, _don’t look at me, don’t look at me, don’t let me see you._

Aimah sits with her until Azula breathes again. 

She takes her hands to her lips, where fire burned just moments ago. Her hands are cold but her face is scorching, and Azula presses her palms against her mouth and shakes until her arms hurt, until her legs have long grown numb from sitting on the wooden floor. Aimah sits right at the edge of her vision, legs pressed up against her chest and pink headscarf the only bright thing for miles.

_Firebending comes from the breath._

Zuko’s voice in her head. A stroll down a guarded garden, in which they both pretended they trusted each other enough to be alone together. He stopped hiding his crown months before she left, and as they walked, his posture was straight like it never was when they were children, and even without his formal robes, he looked every bit the Fire Lord he now was. _Firebending comes from the breath, because breath is life. And fire, before anything else, is alive._

_But if you don’t control fire, it spirals out of control,_ Azula answered. _You start a fire, and it will grow_ . _You forget about it, it goes out._

_So will a life_ , said Zuko, _if someone doesn’t care enough to tend to it._

Stupid brother. Uncle taught him too well. 

Aimah takes Azula’s hands and kisses them open, palms up. “I won’t ask where it hurts,” she whispers. “I’ll just kiss all of it.”

Azula stays until Summer comes again. As she ties her hair back on the top of her head, she almost hesitates. She almost—something. Asks Aimah to come with her. Drops her future to the ground and stays for just one day more, and one more, and one more.

Aimah pretends to be asleep. Azula kisses her closed eyelids, and packs everything she owns into the leather travel bag. 

It takes her two months to make it to Ba Sing Se.)

**iv.**

The big city is just as she remembered it.

Before the Fire Nation invaded, of course. When she, Mai and Ty Lee were undercover as Kyoshi Warriors, and well—no one in the Earth Kingdom, especially in Ba Sing Se, had any idea what the Fire Princess looked like. She had plenty of chances to walk about the Upper Ring, buying little trinkets in the shops, eating honey cakes and chocolate surprises at some nicer cafés spread around the neighborhood. It’s a nice place to live in, Ba Sing Se. A nice place to run away from the rest of the world. 

Getting into the city is a weirdly mild affair. She makes it as far as the immigration center before realizing that as far as these people know, she’s an undocumented refugee; there’s no way she’s getting into the ferry without a passport. And then, someone taps her on the shoulder.

She doesn’t recognize the girl, all wide brown eyes and a fringe that covers half her face, but the smile she gave her had an edge to it that was almost familiar. “Hi there,” the girl says. “Azula, isn’t it? Suki said you might be stopping by soon.”

_Suki_ . The Kyoshi Warrior. Zuko’s — whatever. “And how would she know that?” Azula asks. “I haven’t talked to _Suki_ in—I haven’t talked to her.”

The girl shrugs. “Hey, dude, don’t blame the messenger. I got the hawk from Suki nearly two years ago, so you’re damn lucky I didn’t clock out in that time. She told me to keep an eye out for a girl with _short hair, looks like she would bite your face off, probably doesn’t have anything on her._ Lo and behold,” she says, gesturing towards Azula. “Here you are.”

“Here I am,” Azula agrees, clenching her teeth. “Who are you?”

“Name’s Naomi,” she says. “Ex-Kyoshi Warrior, ex-Fire Nation war prisoner, full time immigrant agent. And apparently, the one thing that’s going to get you on that ferry.”

It takes Naomi a whopping five minutes to come back to where she left Azula, sitting on the benches of the station, and press a two way ticket into her hand. She puts it inside her bag and asks, “How did Suki even know I’d get here?”

Another shrug. “In the letter, she said her friend—your brother? Your brother told her to warn me. Wise guy,” Naomi adds, already walking away. “War or not, all roads lead back to Ba Sing Se. Lost people always find themselves here.”

Azula is _so_ tired of these pretentious girls she keeps meeting. Seriously, who even _talks_ like that?

She takes the ticket. She gets into the ferry, into the city, and has to ask exactly three people for directions before getting where she wants.

The sun is warm on her skin, and the sky is so blue it feels painted on. It’s a beautiful day on The Jasmine Dragon.

Even in the middle of the week, it seems to be a busy day. There are tables set outside of the building, for people who want to bask in the afternoon and fight off the heat, and many customers order their teas to go, walking in and out of the double doors in an almost constant stream. Her heart is in her mouth as she crosses the street, but she bites down on it and walks inside, keeping her head up. 

The space is as unthreatening indoors as it is outdoors, with the walls painted in shades of creamy white and muted green, art pieces and certificates hanging proudly at the far corner, next to the kitchen. The floors are polished wood, as are the tables and chairs, each place set with an arrangement of flowers and sugar on the center of it; the waiters and waitresses barely notice her come in, stepping around her like she isn’t even there to begin with. For a moment or two, she’s thankful. She walked in and nothing crumbled around her. No one is screaming at her to get out. She’s fine. This is fine.

And then, she sees Uncle Iroh.

Azula can tell he doesn’t recognize her at first. After all, he hasn’t seen her since she was a fourteen year old child, straight out of the Agni Kai. Her hair was so long, then. She was so desperate. But Azula, if nothing else, has grown older in this time. She stands in the middle of his tea shop, and waits. She keeps her head held high, holding his gaze until it dawns on his face, his gold eyes widening in realization.

She expects him to do many things. She does not expect him to smile, and hold out his arms, and say, “My niece. How good of you to finally pay a visit to your old Uncle.”

Of course, she notices, after a moment. The tilt of his head, motioning for her to follow along. The way he did not say her name. The Dragon of the West is a master of hiding in plain sight. These people don’t know who he is, and if it’s up to him, they never will.

“Uncle,” she answers, as graciously as she can, bowing in the typical Earth Kingdom way as she approaches him. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” he says, too casual. He places a hand on her shoulder and pushes her towards the staircase leading up, almost imperceptible, and then turns to the girl at the counter. “Jin, I trust you can handle everything on your own for a few minutes? Family calls.”

Jin nods, her brown bangs swaying next to her head with the motion. She punches a few numbers into the typing machine, and then stares Azula up and down. “You’re Lee’s sister, then?” she asks, and doesn’t wait for a response before nodding to herself. “Cool. Tell him I said hi. And that he still owes me for that dinner.”

Uncle Iroh laughs like that’s some sort of long running joke, and then steers Azula up the stairs, into a small apartment on the second floor. The floor is the same polished wood as the shop, but covered in colorful carpets, with portraits and paintings lining nearly every inch of white wall. Some look like a child’s drawings, and Azula takes one look at the name written at the bottom corner of the paper— _from Lu Ten, to Dad_ _—_ before ripping her eyes away like it burned her. 

There’s a small bed in the far corner of the room, next to the window, and across from it, an even smaller kitchen, with a stove, sink and counter. In the center of it all, a low round table houses a board for a half-played Pai Sho match, and Uncle motions for her to sit down on one of the multiple cushions strewn around the floor. She doesn’t even have it in her to ask him where the everloving fuck he got that pot of tea from, _for Agni’s sake, your hands were empty when we walked in here,_ and she just takes the drink and chugs it. 

The fruity, bittersweet taste on her tongue is almost enough to make her cry. Uncle seems to interpret her reaction in a different way, because he smiles gently, running one calloused finger over the edge of his own cup. 

“Raspberry tea,” he says. “Very rare indeed, but I keep it around. Your brother told me it was your favorite.”

“Seems like my brother has been doing a lot of talking to a lot of people,” Azula comments, taking a smaller sip of the tea. “I gather you already knew I was coming here, one way or the other?”

She wasn’t going for a rude approach, and honestly, her tone of voice is so much more mild than she could make it, but a flash of hurt still crosses Uncle’s face. A part of her feels guilty. Another part wants to punch it off.

“Zuko and I have been exchanging letters regularly ever since his coronation,” Uncle Iroh says, face unreadable once again. “The day after you left the Fire Nation, he sent me another one. Just three sentences, all smudged, like they were written in a hurry. _Azula was discharged. Keep an eye out. Keep an eye out for as long as you need._ ” He pours himself some more tea from the pot, and gestures for Azula so he can do the same to her. “He has no idea where you are, but he knows you well enough. Like it or not, you’re too much like him.”

Azula snorts. “If anything, he’s too much like _me_ ,” she says. “I have no chance of ever being half the person he grew up to be.”

It’s something she’s thought repeatedly, ever since she left in the first place. The sister’s greatness and the brother’s goodness. Only one of those things counts in the end, and Azula knows where to cut her losses. She isn’t great anymore. And whatever good is, it’ll always be too much to fit inside her. 

Uncle Iroh levels her with a soft look, his expression pained but earnest. “Oh, my niece,” he says. “I am so, so sorry.”

Azula shrugs. “You should be.” 

He closes her eyes, half expecting the answer, half stunned by the bluntness, but Azula has no reason to play nice. There are two reasons why she came all the way here, and neither of them was to make friends with this man. 

“You should be,” she repeats. “Did you know Zuko blames himself for what happened to me? He never said so, but I could see it in the way he fucking moved. Blames himself for not being there, for leaving me behind, like an open wound for Father to fester in,” Azula spits, chest heaving. She planned what she was going to say, and it all comes bleeding out of her now, rising in pitch. “When it was all on you. _You_ were the adult. Nevermind Mother only wanted the son that was easy to love, nevermind Father never wanted a child as much as he wanted an heir, nevermind you were the only member of that family with even the smallest shard of decency. You loved your son _so_ much, you were broken when he died. And what you lost in Lu Ten, you gained in Zuko. But what about me?”

Her voice cracks, but she doesn’t stop. “What about _me_ , Uncle? Father lit half of Zuko’s face on fire and banished him into a hopeless mission, and we all know he thought he deserved it at the time. What in Agni’s name was _I_ supposed to think? Father was the Fire Lord. He was always right. He defined what being _right_ was.” Azula closes her eyes, fighting desperately not to cry. “My brother once told me that sometimes you need to hit rock bottom before you can climb your way back up. But when Zuko fell, you were there to catch him. You were always _there_ , even when he betrayed you, even when he screamed and yelled and pushed you away. I hit rock bottom,” she says, gasping, her hand against her heart as she looks at her uncle, his old face shining with tears and scrunched up like he’s in pain. “And there was no one. _No one_ . I hit the fucking ground and the only person in my corner was Zuko. And he shouldn’t have been. He’s my older brother, but we were both kids. And this is on _you_.”

When she’s done, her heart barely fits her body with the amount of relief flooding it. The room is silent, broken only by the twinkling glass of her cup as she sets it down and pulls her legs up against her chest. All she wants to do is curl up and cry like a small child, until there’s nothing inside her but the dull ache that comes with being torn open and stitched back together. 

(She thinks of Aimah, and her words. _I won’t ask where it hurts._

_There it is, Aimah_ , she wants to tell her. _I found the open wound. I found it, but you’re not here to kiss it better again._

When this whole ordeal is over, she has a letter to write.)

Uncle looks like Azula’s words aged him about ten years, his face pale and drawn as he stares at his own hands curled around the cup of tea, already cold. He says nothing. And he says nothing. And as he doesn’t say anything, Azula finds that she has no idea what she even wants him to say. An apology would be fruitless; as much as she respects him for everything he did for Zuko, there’s a little girl inside her that just received a postcard, wishing her a _happy thirteenth birthday, Love, Uncle and Zuko,_ and there are bruises in the form of fingerprints covering the girl’s entire left arm, and the girl has to use her right hand to burn it to pieces. She can’t forgive him. 

Uncle Iroh takes a deep breath, and when he speaks, his voice is hoarse. “I have made horrifying mistakes in my life, my niece. I have commited things unspoken of, things that scar this world deeply. I have been taught that to acknowledge your errors is to let go the pain of them, but,” he sets down his cup and looks at Azula straight in the eyes, gold against gold. “Azula, the ways in which I failed you will haunt me to my grave. You are right to resent me, and you are right to never want anything to do with me again.”

“I’m not doing this for your sake, Uncle,” Azula says, as gently as she can. “I won’t forgive you for this. You’re not the kind of person that would ever ask me to. We’ve never been close, and we barely know each other, and we have nothing in common, except for one thing.”

“And what would that thing be?” Uncle asks, though his lips twitch up with the way of someone who already knows the answer. 

“Zuko,” Azula answers, simply. “You love Zuko. So do I. And for better or for worse, we will always be part of his life. If not for your sake, and if not for mine, we’ll do it for his. After all,” she adds, mouth quirking into a smirk, “Dear old Zuzu is just a big-hearted softie who loves his Uncle and sister more than anything else in the world.”

Uncle lets out an unexpected laugh, the sound raspy and bright, and Azula can’t hold back her own smile.

She thinks she can get used to hearing it. 

(That night, she writes two letters. 

Uncle is fast asleep on his bed, his breaths rumbling, and Azula is curled up on the blanket and cushion he gave her, a small flame flickering at the tip of her finger. She takes a breath in, and lets it grow; she exhales, and watches it almost go out. Nighttime in Ba Sing Se is restless, and she can hear the sound of dozens of young people from the Upper Ring walking in and out of parties around the block, laughing and shouting, strings playing in a fast pace all around. 

She misses Caldera city, she notices. She hasn’t stopped to think about it much, all things considered, but she misses the food and the firelight festivals and the scent of blooming fire lilies all around the palace in the spring. Agni, she even misses the low quacking of the turtleducks. 

Azula writers two letters. One of them is addressed to the person she loves most in the world. The other, is to the girl she might grow to love even more, if they’re just given enough time. 

One, she signs with _Love, Azula._ The other, she signs with _Yours_. 

She stays in Ba Sing Se for six months. She doesn’t know what she’s waiting for—she crashes with Uncle most nights, or walks aimlessly until the sunrise, doing the odd job here and there in the Middle Ring to scrape together some of her own money. She’s not afraid to get her hands dirty anymore, and the leather travel bag is nearly part of her own skin, with the way she carries it around. Zuko answers her first letter merely a week after she sent it, a four-page monstrosity that she still reads sometimes, trying to understand the tone he was going for. 

_Honestly, Azula, it’s like you’re still trying to kill me. It’s been four fucking years! Did you ever stop to think_ _—_ _oh, maybe I don’t have a fixed address, but he does? Even if I couldn’t have sent anything back to you, it would have been nice to know that you’re alive, sister mine. Though I suppose you’ve been fending for yourself well enough. Do you miss the sea?_

She didn’t know it was possible for someone to sound so frustrated and yet so proud. He seems particularly excited about the idea of her as a sailor, and mentioned it in every biweekly letter he sent her for an entire month before she steered the subject towards her year with Aimah. Azula almost wishes she hadn’t. 

Azula gets her first response from her on the same day she sees Mai and Ty Lee again.)

She doesn’t know what the city is celebrating for, only that the noise, coupled with Uncle’s snoring, is making it impossible to sleep, so she takes her bag and sets off down the street towards where the lights are brighter. There’s a pond in a park in the Upper Ring, just north of The Jasmine Dragon, and the lanterns rising from the ground seem like a thousand yellow suns shining from its surface and up into the air. Azula watches the fire going up, up, up, until it becomes but a tiny fragment against the dark sky, like an exit wound where light comes pouring out. 

She looks back down and Mai is staring at her, hair styled the same way it used to be, lips pressed into a firm line as she stares Azula down. If not for the way Mai has grown into her height, it would almost seem like no time has passed. Ty Lee, on the other hand, is barely recognizable; her hair is tied into a topknot, and the rest falls halfway down her back, flowing along with her blue dress, and she’s beaming at Mai, completely oblivious to everyone else.

“Well, look who the cat dragged in,” Mai deadpans, her raspy voice just as humorless. “The oncoming storm.”

Ty Lee frowns and looks around. She spots Azula immediately, and if the situation where any different, the way her eyes widen and her jaw falls open would be comical. Instead, Azula feels frozen down to her very bones. She clutches at the red shirt Uncle gave her a few weeks back, because hers was useless, and tries to hold on to something.

Things Azula doesn’t know: how to say goodbye, and how to apologize.

She never needed to apologize to Zuko. Beyond trivial things—the _I’m sorry_ ’s when she runs into people on the street, or says something mean, or drops things to the floor—her mouth can’t form the words. Azula looks at these figures of her past and swallows, throat tight.

Then Ty Lee screeches, “Azula!”, and throws herself into her arms. 

Azula can only blink as her old friend frets over her like she’s a wounded child, patting her cheeks or stroking her hair like checking if she’s really there. “Oh, Agni above!”, Ty Lee exclaims. “I was _so_ worried. Zuko said you _left_ , and then no one heard anything from you for years, Azula, _years_ , and then a few months ago Suki told us that you’d hit the checkpoint at the Ba Sing Se Immigration Center, and then Zuko got a letter from you, and he told us, and we were already on our way to Ba Sing Se _anyway_ , but he told us you were here, so.” She takes a deep breath, squeezing Azula so tight her back cracks. “I was kinda hoping we’d get to see you.”

“Hi, Ty Lee,” Azula says, weakly, and before she can think of anything better, she says, “I’m so, so sorry.”

The two girls stare at her like she’s speaking a foreign language. Azula closes her eyes and thinks that whatever they have to say to her, please let it be quick. Please let it hurt just enough to draw blood and then be over, so they never have to see each other again. 

Instead, Mai lets out the biggest sigh Azula’s ever heard, and reaches with her arms to press both Azula and Ty Lee against her chest, squeezing tight. “Absolute disasters, the lot of you,” she says. “Ty Lee, remember our talk about coming on too strong. Azula, for fuck’s sake, it’s been seven fucking years. What you did was fucked, sure, but we both know Ty Lee doesn’t have a resentful bone in her body, and I am not paid enough to hold grudges.”

Azula tries to peel herself away from Mai’s embrace, to no avail. She shakes her head, closing her eyes tightly. “No, no. It’s not fair, Mai. What I did you both of you is unforgivable. How I tried you for years, the things I said, the way I acted—there are no excuses. I am so, so endlessly sorry,” she says, keeping her voice measured. “You don’t have to forgive me for pity. You don’t have to do that.”

Ty Lee turns to look at her, eyes suspiciously bright. “You _idiot_ ,” she says, fiercely. “You don’t get to choose what we do and don’t forgive.”

Mai sighs again. “Girls, girls,” she says, patting both of their heads. “Enough fights.”

Ty Lee pokes Azula in the chest, repeatedly. “We forgive you,” she says. “But you literally owe me a lifetime of free hugs. And cuddling. And—”

“Careful,” Mai says, pushing them away and crossing her arms again. Under the dim lights of the lanterns, she could even be blushing. “You’re going to make me jealous.”

Ty Lee laughs. 

When Azula gets back to Uncle Iroh’s apartment, a letter is waiting on top of her blanket, the handwriting rough and swirly. _Meet me halfway,_ it says. _I’ll walk with you, wherever you want me to go. I won’t love the bruises out of you, but maybe we can work towards something more than hurt._

(They can.)

**v.**

Brother and sister, on opposite sides of a courtyard.

The brother is not a boy anymore, and the sister isn’t a girl, either. There’s a young man with a crown on his shoulders but casual fighting robes as he spars with a friend, and there’s a young woman with her hair shorn short and years of travel under her feet. 

The sister smiles. “Hello, brother,” she says. “Miss me?”

“Azula,” the brother says, breathless, dizzy with relief. “You have no idea.”

They don’t know who moves first. But they meet in the middle, crashing into each other in a tangle of limbs and elbows and knees, and she laughs as he buries his face on her neck and lets out a string of curses, then a sob, until he’s crying like a child. She pats his hair and sushes him, both holding each other. 

It takes her five years to make it back home. 

**Author's Note:**

> so. what a ride.
> 
> i did my best to keep the timeline of events cohesive and if u have any doubts feel free to ask me! any questions at all tbh i'm all ears!
> 
> as always, comments and kudos are appreciated! if you want to yell at me, you can do that on twitter @bornfrombeauty .


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